A hard disk is made of, for example, an aluminum alloy plate also known as a "platter". Coated on the aluminum alloy plate is a magnetic film on which carbon is deposited so as to store data thereon. Once a hard disk drive has been produced, a user cannot immediately use the produced hard disk drive. This is because the magnetic film on the platter is not formatted. Thus the hard disk drive is formatted and thereafter can be used.
A formatting process utilizes a first step of physical formatting, which is called a "low level format", so that the configuration of data patterns is defined to form a number of sectors. A partitioning step is then carried out so that the whole region of the physically formatted hard disk is partitioned into more than one partition block. Then a logical formatting step, called a "high level format", is carried out according to a disk operating system which is loaded on the host personal computer. After that time, the hard disk drive can be used. Each of the partition blocks has an individual address. This individual address is represented by information concerning the head, sector and cylinder. A plurality of consecutive sectors are divided by cylinders.
In the event that a single hard disk is partitioned according to a prior art disk partitioning method, the entire region of the disk can be divided into consecutive partition blocks. As illustrated in U.S. Pat. No. 5,136,711 to James M. Hugard, et al. and entitled System For Multiple Access Hard Disk Partitioning, wherein multiple hard disk partitions for installing multiple incompatible absolute zero sector operating systems are provided. It can be seen that there are no overlapped partitions.
After partitioning the hard disk according to the prior art method, the second region of the hard disk is deleted, the partition block defined by the second region is not included in the first region. Thus, in order to utilize the entire region of the hard disk, a disk partitioning process step must be performed again.
The complexity of personal computers has increased dramatically in recent years. Complex computer systems require similarly complex disk operating systems to support the wide variety of possible system hardware and software configurations available today. During fabrication of such complex personal computers, a testing step must be performed in order to check whether each of the produced computers is normally operated and whether specific program files are normally executed. After termination of the testing, when the complex personal computers are powered off, they may become damaged.
Also, when a computer system is initially operated by the complex operating system, a maker must input some information such as product number, etc. Since a complex operating system, however, has a different product number, it takes a maker a long time to input the specific product information to all the produced computer systems.
To overcome the above described disadvantages, another prior art method is proposed which has the process steps for partitioning a hard disk of produced computer system into two partition blocks, i.e., first and second regions, by a disk duplicating apparatus, duplicating a complex operating system for testing the computer system on the second region of the hard disk, and erasing the operating system duplicated on the second region after testing the computer system using the duplicated operating system. However, the above described method requires a long time in duplicating the complex operating system on the second region of the hard disk. And, even though a maker erases the operating system duplicated on the second region after testing the computer system, a user cannot use the entire region of the hard disk because the hard disk remains partitioned into two partition blocks. This is because an operating system installed in the computer system by a user can recognize only the first region as the entire region of hard disk.
Thus, at least one operating system maker has provided a program capable of booting the complex operating system using a floppy disk without key entry of specific product information to the computer system. In this case, however, the computer system must be booted by a different operating system so as to duplicate operating system files from the floppy disk to the hard disk.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,600,840 to John J. Pearce, et al. entitled Automatic Adjustment Of Disk Space Required For Suspend-To-Disk Operation performs system-to-disk processes utilizing an extended partition form from a part of a native operating system (OS) partition, that is, the extended partition overlaps the OS partition. Additionally, the native partition can be deleted, thereby returning the data blocks to the native OS partition.